The Corner Bank: Results from the Vince McInyre Memorial Canada Bar Box Championships

Winner Jason Klatt with Angus McInyre

By: Erik Hjorleifson

This past weekend the Corner Bank in Scarborough, Ontario held the annual Vince McItnyre memorial tournament sponsored by Molson breweries. It has been about 4 years since Vince's passing and his involvement in the Ontario pool community is sorely missed. Vince was an active sponsor of myself and John Morra and many other top players in the area.

He also was known to enjoy a good "challenge match" and was a perennial favorite in any team competition he entered. This weekend was a great way to honour his memory with so many top players showing up to compete for the title at his favourite game, bar table 8 ball. Vince's brother Angus McIntyre made the trip down from Alberta to honour his memory and many fond memories were shared throughout the weekend.

The format was $5000 added, 8 ball,race to 8 on the winners side, race to 6 on the losers side with alternate breaks. Play would be on 15 newly clothed Diamond bar tables, the festivities kicked off on Thursday night with the player auction. The first two choices of the field  went for a total of $7700 combined, John Morra was chosen first and Jason Klatt went second. Myself, Tyler Styer, Andy Aupin and Ben Crawley also went for high amounts.

Play began Friday morning. The draw was fairly spread out among the top four favourites but there would be many players looking to take a shot at the them with 67 total entrants including most of the best players in Ontario. Former Canadian bar table champion Rob Hall drew into John Morra in the second round and John served notice that he was ready to play with an impressive 8-0 win. Jason Klatt also took on former World Junior English 8 ball champion Ben Crawley, Jason would come away with an 8 4 victory in this one.

Day two would see the field eliminated down to 12 players. The feature match of the day was between Tyler Styer and Jason Klatt, this match was very close with Jason edging out Tyler 8-6. Andy Aupin from Sudbury, myself and John Morra also advanced undefeated into Sunday play. Mario Morra, Louis Fazekas and Alain Lessard were the strongest threats  still alive on the losers side.

In the winners side semi final matches John Morra and I had a match filled with run outs seeing John get the final edge, Jason Klatt also defeated Andy Aupin 8-2. With the shortened race on the losers side and all of the players left in the tournament playing at a very high level it was anyone's game. Mario Morra not known for playing much on the bar table made a respectable run all the way to 4th place finally being defeated by Tyler Styer.

John Morra defeated Klatt in the winners side final who would now face Styer in the third place match. This proved to be another close one with Klatt edging out Styer 6-4. This set up a rematch between arguably the two best players in the tournament, these two have battled many times on Canadian soil. Today was Jason's day as he double dipped John 8-2 and 8-6 scoring a very well deserved win.

Special thanks goes out to the Corner Bank along with John White and Frank Kakouros for running the tournament. The Corner Bank has continued to raise the bar for competitive pool in Ontario and we hope to see more in the future.

1st Jason Klatt $3500
2nd John Morra $1900
3rd Tyler Styer   $1200
4th Mario Morra $700
5th Andy Aupin   $500
       Erik Hjorleifson
7th Tim Bristow  $350
       Jeet Khandai
9th Alain Lessard  $300
      Stefane Godhino
      Louis Fazekas
Top Amateur prize Tim Bistow and Stefane Godhino $250 each
Player Auction total $15, 200

Ottawa: Details for the 4th Annual 8 Ball Bar Box Summer Shootout at Tailgators

Press Release

The 4th Annual Summer Shootout at Tailgators in Ottawa will be held AUGUST 11TH -13TH.

Doubles which will be alternate shots format starts Friday August 11th at 6pm. The singles will start Sat afternoon.

The divisions are :

Copper doubles $40 per team TRS 180
Bronze doubles $50 per team TRS 160
Silver doubles  $60 per team TRS 110

Copper singles  $20 TRS MAX 90
Bronze singles  $40 TRS MAX 70
Silver singles  $50 TRS MAX 50

Touhey Tax invite tourney $100
($1000 added max 16 players. Yes Calcutta.  NO PROS )

***Spots are limited in all divisions so please contact Curtis Houlden to reserve your spot.   ****

              curtishoulden@gmail.com

         Host hotel is rideauheightsinn.com

Instructional: A Beginners Pool Workout

 By: Luca Bares

If you want to improve your pool game there’s only one sure way to do it: time on the table. Practicing is the best way to improve, but you should avoid blindly hit balls into pockets for hours on end. Even though you’re at the table, this kind of practice doesn’t work on developing your focus and it doesn’t improve your weaknesses. To do that you need to know what areas of your game are lacking and deliberately work on those areas to get better.

To make your life easier, we put together this set of drills you can use for your own practice routine. While you use this guide, mark down how well you do on each drill in a notebook or on your phone. Over time this personal practice journal will show the gradual improvements you’ve made which will be a big motivator as you become a better player.

Stroke Drill

Putting unwanted left or right english is one of the most common mistakes beginners make. A lot of the time they don’t know they’re hitting the cue ball off center so it's hard to figure out why they missed. As you may know, english adds a whole host of variables that can change a shot like throw, swerve, and deflection so it's something you should avoid doing unless you're adding english on purpose. To get rid of unwanted english on the cue ball you have to work on your stroke. Luckily with the drill below you can accomplish just that!

Place the cue ball on the spot and take aim directly down the table towards the center diamond on the short rail. If it's hard to see this precise spot while down on the shot, place a piece of chalk over the diamond on the rail so you can see it while you shoot. From here shoot the cue ball down to the end rail and back. If the cue ball comes back and touches the tip of your cue without you moving the stick, you hit this shot correctly and no extra english was added. If the cue ball didn’t come directly back to your stick then there was some accidental english on the cue ball altering its path.

If you notice that the cue ball tends to go in one direction off the rail more than another, for example you hit the cue ball and it goes left off the rail, this means you are accidentally putting on left english. If this happens try to adjust by moving your cue stick a hair to the right until it comes back to where it's supposed to during this drill.

Challenge: Once you’re able to execute this shot consistently, add a little variation into the drill by hitting the cue ball with top or bottom spin as well. You’ll notice this increases the difficulty drastically and it’ll show how accurate your stroke is using top or bottom spin.

No Scratching Drill

The shot below is a dreaded shot for many. The reason is that the cue ball always tends to go towards the corner pocket and scratch when you least want it to. However, with a little knowledge and practice you can avoid a scratch easily. The secret is to use draw or follow on the cue ball to change its path.

Set up this shot with the 8 ball on the spot and the cue ball in the center of the table. From here, try to make this shot without scratching. Put follow on the cue ball to make it hit the short rail and use draw to pull it over to the side rail. Knowing how and when to use each will be important when playing position for different shots.

Shotmaking Drill

Side pocket shots are some of the most frustrating shots for a pool player. Despite the fact that the actual pocket opening is larger than the corner pockets, once you start to change the angle you come a the pocket with the cue ball or the object ball those pockets shrink up drastically. So there’s only one thing to do to practice these shots for a game: practice them.

Put an object ball in the middle of the table and the cue ball over the side pocket. From here try to pocket the object ball from every position in the diagram below. You might find the first four positions to be fairly easy, but once you start moving down the line, it begins to get much more difficult.

Safety Drill

An often overlooked aspect of a novice’s game is their safety play. This is a real shame because a novice player who can play a lock up safety can shoot one or two levels above their game to a player who isn’t as proficient when it comes to defense. A common occurrence that comes up, especially in nine ball is when the object ball is in the middle of the rail leaving you with not shot.

An easy and fairly simple safety to play in this situation is to hit half of the 9 ball and leave the cue ball and the nine on opposite sides of the long rails which leaves your opponent nothing but a bank or a return safety. This can be the difference between risking a game and winning a game

.